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For current information on ODF, please see the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee.

<td class="opendoc-table"> Sun issues a patent covenant statement:<br /> <br /> &ldquo;Sun's public non-assertion declaration may be summarized unofficially as an irrevocable covenant not to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument specification&rdquo;<br /> (http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-10-04-a.html) </td>

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<td class="opendoc-table"> Sun issues a <a href="http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-10-04-a.html">patent covenant statement</a>:<br /> <br /> &ldquo;Sun's public non-assertion declaration may be summarized unofficially as an irrevocable covenant not to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument specification&rdquo; </td>

The OpenDocument format has a long tradition of openness. The first work on the file format started as early as 1999. Right from the beginning ODF was designed as an open and implementation neutral file format.

The open specification process started in 2000 with the foundation of the OpenOffice.org open source project and the community efforts within its XML development project. An even higher level of openness was established in 2002 with the creation of the OASIS Open Office Technical Committee (TC).

Date / Time Frame

Event / Milestone

1999

The Development of an XML default file format begins at StarDivision. Limitations of the old binary format and a need for Unicode support trigger the change. The goal is to create an open interoperable file format that can be used and implemented by other vendors as well.

August 1999

Sun Microsystems, Inc. acquires StarDivision.

13 October 2000

The OpenOffice.org open source project gets founded by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

13 October 2000

The XML community project gets setup on OpenOffice.org with the goal to define the specification of the OpenOffice.org XML file format as on open community effort.

* Introduction of XML namespaces that conform to the OASIS naming rules * Switching from XML DTD's to Relax-NG as the schema language * Improvements of the schema to better support the validation of documents * Adaptation of the schema to new versions of standards * Adaptations for additional office applications (KOffice) * Adaptations for new office application versions (OpenOffice.org 2.0) * Removal of inconsistencies in the specification * Error corrections

December 2004

A second committee draft gets approved, and the tile of this draft gets changed from “OASIS Open Office Specification” to “OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument)”

“Sun's public non-assertion declaration may be summarized unofficially as an irrevocable covenant not to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument specification”

December 2005

Softmaker releases Textmaker 2006 with ODF support.

January 2006

IBM releases IBM Workplace with ODF support.

March 2006

The ODF Alliance gets founded with 35 founding members in order to promote ODF in the public sector.